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HM Bark Endeavour
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His Majesty's Bark Endeavour was a 10-gun Royal Navy bark commanded by Lieutenant James Cook on his first voyage of discovery, to Australia and New Zealand in 1769-71.
Launched in 1764 as the collier Earl of Pembroke, she was purchased by the Navy in 1768 for a scientific mission to the Pacific Ocean, and to explore the seas for the postulated Terra Australis Incognita or "unknown southern land".
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His Majesty's Bark Endeavour was a 10-gun Royal Navy bark commanded by Lieutenant James Cook on his first voyage of discovery, to Australia and New Zealand in 1769-71.
Launched in 1764 as the collier Earl of Pembroke, she was purchased by the Navy in 1768 for a scientific mission to the Pacific Ocean, and to explore the seas for the postulated Terra Australis Incognita or "unknown southern land". Renamed and commissioned as His Majesty's Bark the Endeavour, she departed Plymouth in August 1768, rounded Cape Horn and reached Tahiti in time to observe the 1769 transit of Venus across the Sun. She then set sail into the largely uncharted ocean to the south, stopping at the Pacific islands of Huahine, Borabora, Raiatea and Rurutu to allow Cook to claim them for Great Britain. In September 1769 she anchored off New Zealand, the first vessel to reach the islands since Abel Tasman's Heemskerck 127 years earlier. In April 1770 the Endeavour became the first seagoing vessel to reach the east coast of Australia, when Cook went ashore at what is now known as Botany Bay.
The Endeavour then sailed north along the Australian coast. She narrowly avoided disaster after running aground on the Great Barrier Reef, and was forced to beach herself on the mainland for rudimentary repairs to her hull. On 10 October 1770 she limped into port in Batavia in the Dutch East Indies for more substantial repairs, her crew sworn to secrecy about the southern continent they had discovered. She resumed her westward journey on 26 December, rounded the Cape of Good Hope on 13 March 1771 and reached the English port of Dover on 12 July, having been at sea for nearly three years.
Largely forgotten after her epic voyage, the Endeavour spent the next four years shipping Navy stores to the Falkland Islands. Renamed and sold into private hands in 1775, she briefly returned to naval service as a troop transport during the American Revolution and was deliberately scuttled in a blockade of Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island in 1778. Her wreck has not been precisely located, but relics including six of her cannons and an anchor are displayed at maritime museums worldwide. A replica of the Endeavour was launched in 1994 and is berthed alongside the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney Harbour.
Construction
The Endeavour was originally a merchant collier named Earl of Pembroke, launched in June 1764 from the coal and whaling port of Whitby in North Yorkshire. She was ship-rigged and sturdily built with a broad, flat bow, a square stern and a long box-like body with a deep hold. Her length was 106 ft (32.3 m), and on her lower deck, with a beam of 29 ft 3 in (8.9 m). Her burthen was 368 71/94 tons.
A flat-bottomed design made her well-suited to sailing in shallow waters and allowed her to be beached for loading and unloading of cargo and for basic repairs without requiring a dry dock. Her hull, internal floors and futtocks were built from traditional white oak, her keel and stern post from elm and her masts from pine and fir. Plans of the ship also show a double keelson to lock the keel, floors and frames in place.
Some doubt exists about the height of her masts, as surviving diagrams of the Endeavour depict the body of the vessel only, and not the mast plan. While her main and foremasts are accepted to be a standard respectively, an annotation on one surviving ship plan records the mizzen as "16 yards 29 inches" ( m). If correct, this would produce an oddly truncated mast a full thirty feet (10 m) shorter than the standards of the day. Modern research suggests the annotation may be a transcription error and should read "26 yards 29 inches" ( m), which would more closely conform with both the naval standards and the lengths of the other masts.
Purchase and refit by Admiralty
On 16 February 1768 the Royal Society petitioned King George III to finance a scientific expedition to the Pacific to study and observe the 1769 transit of Venus across the sun. Royal approval was granted for the expedition, and the Admiralty elected to combine the scientific voyage with a confidential mission to search the south Pacific for signs of the postulated continent Terra Australis Incognita (or "unknown southern land").
The Royal Society suggested command be given to Scottish geographer Alexander Dalrymple, whose acceptance was conditional on a brevet commission as a Navy captain. However, First Lord of the Admiralty Edward Hawke refused, going so far as to say he would rather cut off his right hand than give command of a Navy vessel to someone not educated as a seaman. In refusing to Dalrymple's command, Hawke was influenced by previous insubordination aboard the sloop HMS Paramour in 1698, when naval officers had refused to take orders from civilian commander Dr Edmond Halley.
The impasse was broken when the Admiralty proposed James Cook, a Naval officer with a background in mathematics and cartography. Acceptable to both parties, Cook was promoted to Lieutenant and named as commander of the expedition.
On 27 May 1768 Cook took command of the Lord Pembroke, newly purchased by the Navy for the sum of £2307 5s. 6d. and assigned for use in the Society's expedition. She was refitted at Deptford on the River Thames, with sheathing and caulking to protect against shipworms and a third internal deck to provide cabins, a powder magazine and storerooms. The new cabins provided around two square metres of floorspace apiece and were to be allocated to Cook, naturalist Joseph Banks, Banks' assistants Daniel Solander and Herman Spöring, astronomer Charles Green and the artists Sydney Parkinson and Alexander Buchan. These cabins encircled the officers mess. The Great Cabin at the rear of the deck was to be a workroom for Cook and his passengers. On the rear lower deck, cabins facing on to the mate's mess were assigned to Lieutenants Zachary Hicks and John Gore, ship's surgeon William Monkhouse, the gunner Stephen Forwood, ship's master Robert Molyneux and the captain's clerk Richard Orton. The adjoining open mess deck housed the sleeping and living quarters for the marines and crew, as well as storage areas.
On 21 July 1768 the ship was sailed to Galleon's Reach to take on cannons, and on 30 July to Plymouth for provisioning and to board its crew of 85 including 12 Royal Marines. Lastly, Cook ordered twelve tons of pig iron brought on board as sailing ballast.
The refitted vessel was registered as His Majesty's "Bark Endeavour", to distinguish her from another Endeavour in the Royal Navy, a 14-gun sloop.
Voyage of discovery
Outward voyage
The Endeavour departed Plymouth on 26 August 1768, carrying 94 people. Livestock on board included two greyhounds and a milking goat.
The voyage commenced with a landfall among the Madeira Islands, then continued along the west coast of Africa and across the Atlantic to South America arriving in Rio de Janeiro on 13 November, 1768. The next leg rounded Cape Horn into the South Pacific, reaching Tahiti on 10 April 1769, where she remained for the next two months. The transit of Venus across the Sun occurred on 8 June, and was observed and recorded by astronomer Charles Green from the Endeavours deck.
Pacific exploration
The transit observed, the Endeavour turned south to explore the open ocean for Terra Australis Incognita. Landfall was made at the Pacific islands of Huahine, Borabora, Raiatea and Rurutu, providing opportunities for Cook to declare them to be British territories, and for the Endeavour to replenish her stores. In September 1769 the Endeavour reached the coastline of New Zealand, becoming the first European vessel to do so since Abel Tasman discovered the islands in 1642. Unfamiliar with such ships, the Maori people at Cook's first landing point in Poverty Bay thought the ship was a floating island, or a gigantic bird from their mythical homeland of Hawaiki.
The Endeavour spent the next six months sailing close to shore, while Cook mapped the coastline and reached the conclusion that New Zealand comprised two large islands and was not the hoped-for Terra Australis. In March 1770 the Endeavour longboat carried Cook ashore to allow him to formally proclaim British sovereignty over New Zealand. On his return the Endeavour resumed her voyage westward, sighting the coast of Australia on 19 April. On 29 April she became the first European vessel to make landfall on the east coast of Australia, when Cook landed one of the ships boats on the southern shore of what is now known as Botany Bay, New South Wales.
Shipwreck
For the next four months Cook charted the coast of Australia, heading generally northward. Just before 11pm on 11 June 1770 the ship struck a reef, today called Endeavour Reef, within the Great Barrier Reef system. The sails were immediately taken down, a kedging anchor set and an unsuccessful attempt made to drag the ship back to open water. The reef Endeavour had struck stood so steeply from the seabed that although the ship was hard aground, Cook measured up to of water less than one ship's length away.
Cook then ordered that the ship be lightened to help her float off the reef. Iron and stone ballast, spoiled stores and all but four of the ships guns were thrown overboard and the ship's drinking water pumped out. Buoys were attached to the discarded guns with the intention of retrieving them later, but this proved impractical. Every man on board took turns on the pumps including Cook, Banks and the other officers.
When by Cook's reckoning about of equipment had been thrown overboard, on the high tide the next morning a further unsuccessful attempt was made to pull the ship free. In the afternoon of 12 June the longboat carried out two large bower anchors and block and tackle were rigged to the anchor chains to allow another attempt on the evening high tide. The ship had now started to take on water through a hole in her hull. Although the leak would certainly increase once off the reef, Cook decided to risk the attempt and at 10:20 pm the ship was floated on the tide and successfully drawn off. The anchors were retrieved, except for one which could not be freed from the seabed and had to be abandoned.
As expected, the leak increased with the ship off the reef and all three working pumps had to be continually manned. A mistake happened in sounding the depth of water in the hold when a new man measured from the outside plank where his predecessor had used the top of the cross-beams of the hull. The mistake suggested the water depth had increased by about between soundings, sending a wave of fear through the ship. As soon as the mistake was realised, redoubled efforts kept the pumps ahead of the leak.
The prospects if the ship sank were grim. The vessel was from shore and the three ship's boats could not carry the entire crew. Despite this, the diaries of Joseph Banks noted the calm efficiency of the crew in the face of danger, contrary to stories he had heard of seamen turning to plunder and refusing command in such circumstances.
Midshipman Jonathon Munkhouse proposed fothering the ship, as he had been on a merchant ship which used the technique successfully. He was entrusted with supervising the task, sewing bits of oakum and wool into an old sail, which was then drawn under the ship to allow water pressure to force it into the hole in the hull. The effort succeeded and soon very little water was entering, allowing all but one of the pumps to be stopped.
The Endeavour then resumed her course northward and parallel to the reef, the crew looking for a safe harbour in which to make repairs. On 13 June the ship came to a broad watercourse that Cook named the Endeavour River. Attempts were made to enter the river mouth but strong winds and rain prevented the Endeavour from crossing the bar until the afternoon of 17 June. There she was beached and careened her to make repairs to the hull. A piece of coral the size of a man's fist had sliced clean through the planks of the hull and broken off. Surrounded by pieces of oakum, the coral fragment had helped plug the hole in the hull and preserved the ship from sinking on the reef.
Northward to Batavia
After waiting for the wind, the Endeavour resumed its voyage on the afternoon of 3 August, passing by the northern-most point of Cape York Peninsula and then sailing through Torres Strait between Australia and New Guinea, earlier navigated by Luis Vaez de Torres in 1606. To keep the Endeavours voyages and discoveries secret, Cook confiscated the log books and journals of all on board and ordered them to remain silent about where they had been. After a three-day layover off the island of Savu, the Endeavour sailed on to Batavia, the capital of the Dutch East Indies, on 10 October. The following day she was struck by lightning during a sudden tropical storm, but narrowly avoided damage thanks to rudimentary "electric chain" or lightning rod that Cook had ordered rigged to her mast.
The ship remained in very poor condition. The ship's carpenter John Satterly noted it was "very leaky - makes from twelve to six inches an hour, occasioned by her main keep being wounded in many paces, false keel gone from beyond the midships. Wounded on her larbord side where the greatest leak is but I could not come at it for the water."12 in ˜ 300 mm
6 in ˜ 150 mm An inspection of the hull revealed that some unrepaired planks were cut through to within ? inch (3 mm). Cook noted it was a "surprise to every one who saw her bottom how we had kept her above water" for the previous three month voyage across open seas.
After riding at anchor for two weeks the Endeavour was heaved out of the water on 9 November and laid on her side for repairs. Some damaged timbers were found to be infested with shipworm, which required careful removal to ensure they did not spread throughout the hull. Broken timbers were replaced and the hull recaulked, scraped for shellfish and marine flora and repainted. Finally, the rigging and pumps were renewed and fresh stores brought aboard for the return journey to England. Repairs and replenishment were completed by Christmas Day 1770, and the next day the Endeavour weighed anchor and set sail westward towards the Indian Ocean.
Return voyage
Unfortunately, though the ship herself was now in good condition, the crew were not. All but ten of the 94 people aboard the Endeavour had been taken ill. When the Endeavour set sail on 26 December, seven had already died and a further 40 were too sick to attend their duties. Over the following twelve weeks a further 23 would die from disease and be buried at sea, including Solander, Green, Parkinson and the ship's surgeon William Monkhouse. Cook attributed the sickness to polluted drinking water, and ordered that it be purified with lime juice, but this had little effect. John Munkhouse, who had proposed fothering the ship to save it from sinking on the reef, died on 6 February, followed six days later by the ship's carpenter John Slattery, whose skilled repair work in Batavia had allowed the Endeavour to resume her voyage. The health of the surviving crew members slowly improved as the month progressed, and the final deaths were those of three seamen on 27 February, with Cook noting his hope that they would be the last as all those still sick were now clearly recovering.
On 13 March 1771 the Endeavour rounded the Cape of Good Hope, making port in Cape Town on the 15th. Those crew members still sick were taken ashore for treatment. The ship remained in port for four weeks awaiting the recovery of the crew and undergoing minor repairs to her masts. On 15 April the sick were brought back on board along with a full complement of sailors engaged from among the Cape Town population, and the Endeavour resumed her voyage across the Atlantic Ocean towards England. The English mainland was sighted on 10 July and the Endeavour entered the port of Dover two days later.
Approximately one month after his return Cook was promoted to the rank of Commander and by November 1771 was in receipt of Admiralty Orders for a new expedition to the southern hemisphere. He was killed in an altercation with native Hawaiians at Kealakekua Bay on 14 February 1779.
Later service
While Cook was feted for his successful voyage, the Endeavour itself was not. With her exploration mission at an end she was refitted as a stores ship and made four tedious return voyages to the Falkland Islands before being sold to shipping magnate J. Mather for £645 in 1775. The increasingly decrepit vessel was renamed the Lord Sandwich and made at least one commercial voyage to Archangel in Russia.
In late 1775, Mather was asked by the Admiralty to provide one of his ships to transport soldiers to North America to help defeat the colonial militia during the American Revolution. Mather offered to return the ageing Lord Sandwich to military service, but her condition was so poor that she was declared unseaworthy in December 1775. After extensive repairs the ship was finally accepted as a troop transport in February 1776 and embarked a contingent of Hessian mercenaries bound for New York and Rhode Island.
After delivering her mercenary cargo, the Lord Sandwich was sailed to Newport, Rhode Island where it was retained at anchor and intermittently used as a prison ship under the British flag.
Final resting place
The Endeavours end came in August 1778, when the British settlement at Narragansett Bay was threatened by a fleet carrying French soldiers in support of the colonial militia. The British commander, Captain John Brisbane, determined to blockade the bay by sinking surplus vessels at its mouth. Between 3 August and 6 August, twenty ships were scuttled at various locations in the Bay, including the Lord Sandwich.[Navy vessels scuttled in Narragansett Bay from 3-6 August 1778 were the frigates Juno 32, Lark 32, Orpheus 32 and Cerberus 28; the galleys Spitfire, Alarm and Pigot, the sloops Falcon, Flora and Kingfisher and the transports Betty, Britannia, Earl of Oxford, Good Intent, Grand Duke of Russia, Lord Sandwich, Malaga, Rachel and Mary, Susanna and Union.]
The owners of the sunken vessels were compensated by Admiralty for the loss of their ships. The Admiralty valuation for the sunken vessel recorded the specifications of the Lord Sandwich as matching those of the former Endeavour, including construction in Whitby, a burthen of 368 and 71/94 tons, and re-entry into Navy service on 10 February 1776.
In 1834, a letter appeared in the Providence Journal of Rhode Island drawing attention to the possible presence of the former Endeavour on the seabed of the bay. This was swiftly disputed by the British consul in Rhode Island, who wrote claiming the Endeavour had been bought from Mather by the French in 1790 and renamed La Liberte. The consul later admitted he had heard this not from the Admiralty, but as hearsay from the former owners of the French ship. It was later suggested the Liberty which sank off Newport in 1793 was in fact another of Cook's ships, the former HMS Resolution, or another Endeavour, a naval schooner sold out of service in 1782.
A further letter to the Providence Journal stated that a retired English sailor was conducting guided tours of a hulk on the River Thames as late as 1825, claiming that the ship had once been Cook's Endeavour.
In 1991, the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project, or RIMAP, began research into the identity of the ten transports sunk as part of the Narragansett Bay blockade, including whether the Lord Sandwich recorded as having been sunk was originally Cook's Endeavour. Evidence from the Public Records Office in London confirmed that the Endeavour had been renamed the Lord Sandwich, had served as a troop transport to North America, and had been scuttled as part of the blockade of Narragansett Bay
In 1999, a combined research team from RIMAP and the Australian National Maritime Museum began examining known wrecks in the Bay, to determine if any could be the Endeavour. In 2000, a site was identified containing the remains of one of the blockaded vessels, partly covered by a separate wreck of a twentieth century barge. The older remains were those of a vessel of the same size, design and materials of the Lord Sandwich, the ex-Endeavour.
Confirmation that Cook's former ship was indeed in Narragansett Bay sparked considerable media and public interest in confirming its location. However, while researchers were able to photograph relics at the site, including a cannon, an anchor and part of an eighteenth century ceramic teapot, too little evidence existed to definitively establish that this particular wreck had been Cook's ship. In 2006 the Director of RIMAP announced that the wreck would not be raised.
Endeavour relics
In addition to the search for the remains of the ship itself, there was considerable Australian interest in locating relics of the ship's south Pacific voyage. In 1886, the Working Men's Progress Association of Cooktown sought to recover the six cannons thrown overboard when the Endeavour grounded on the Great Barrier Reef. A £300 reward was offered for anyone who could locate and recover the guns, but searches that year and the next were fruitless and the money went unclaimed.
In 1937, a small part of the Endeavours keel was gifted to the Australian Government by the philanthropist Charles Wakefield in his capacity as President of the Admiral Arthur Phillip Memorial. Australian Prime Minister Joseph Lyons described the section of keel "intimately associated with the discovery and foundation of Australia."
Searches also resumed for the lost Endeavour Reef cannons, but expeditions in 1966, 1967 and 1968 were unsuccessful. They were finally recovered in 1969 by a research team from the American Academy of Natural Sciences, which used a sophisticated magnetometer to locate the cannons, a quantity of iron ballast and the abandoned bower anchor. Conservation work on the cannons was undertaken by the Australian National Maritime Museum, and two of the cannons were displayed at its headquarters in Sydney's Darling Harbour. A third cannon and the bower anchor were displayed at the James Cook Museum in Cooktown and the remaining three at maritime museums in London,Philadelphia and the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington.
Replica vessel
In January 1988, to commemorate the Australian Bicentenary of European settlement in Australia, work began in Fremantle, Western Australia on a replica of Endeavour. Financial difficulties delayed completion until December 1993, and the vessel was not commissioned until April 1994. The replica vessel commenced her maiden voyage in October of that year, sailing to Sydney Harbour and then following Cook's path from Botany Bay northward to Cooktown. From 1996 to 2002 the replica retraced Cook's ports of call around the world, arriving in the original Endeavours home port of Whitby in June 2002. Footage of waves shot rounding Cape Horn on this voyage was later used in digitally-composited scenes in the 2003 film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
She visited various European ports before undertaking her final ocean voyage from Plymouth to Sydney Harbour on 8 November 2004. Her arrival in Sydney was delayed when she ran aground in Botany Bay a short distance from the point where Cook first set foot in Australia 235 years earlier. The replica Endeavour finally entered Sydney Harbour on 17 April 2005, having travelled , a distance equivalent to twice around the world.
Ownership of the replica was transferred to the Australian National Maritime Museum in 2005 for permanent service as a museum ship in Sydney's Darling Harbour.
A second full size replica of the Endeavour is berthed on the River Tees in Stockton-on-Tees. While reflective of the external dimensions of Cook's vessel, the vessel was constructed with a steel rather than a timber frame and one less internal deck than the original, and is not designed to be put to sea.
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